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INSIDE THIS ISSUE
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How Cooking Became a Passion
Empty Nest, Full Flavor: Tips for 2-Person Meals
Get to Know Samantha Baughman!
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The Thrift Store Discovery of a Lifetime
Stuffed Pepper Soup
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Did the FBI Really ‘Steal’ $86 million?
HANG ON — THE FBI ROBBED A BANK? THE STORY BEHIND A MIND-BLOWING CALIFORNIA RAID
“This was the largest armed robbery in United States history, and it was committed by the FBI.” That jaw-dropping statement came from Robert Frommer, an attorney representing several hundred people whose safe deposit boxes were emptied during an FBI raid in 2021. The story is wild from start to finish. On that fateful day in March, armed FBI agents stormed a California strip mall and burst into a U.S. Private Vaults bank branch. They searched 1,400 safe deposit boxes and confiscated the contents of many of them — making off with roughly $86 million, plus valuable collectibles like coins, gold, and jewelry. Why would the agency do this? Well, after a two-year investigation, the FBI suspected U.S. Private Vaults was catering to drug dealers and other criminals hiding cash in Los Angeles. So, the agency obtained a warrant and raided the bank to look for proof.
And apparently, they found it. After the raid, U.S. Private Vaults pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder drug money and closed its doors for good. However, that wasn’t the end of the saga. Remember attorney Robert Frommer? Roughly 400 people who kept their money at U.S. Private Vaults hired him to get the contents of their safe deposit boxes back from the FBI. They said they weren’t criminals and wanted their money back. One of those people was Joseph Ruiz, who lost $57,000 in savings during the FBI raid. He filed a lawsuit, claiming the raid was unconstitutional. When the FBI accused Ruiz of making his money through illegal drug sales, Ruiz showed proof of his income, and in August 2021, the FBI agreed to return his funds. However, not every U.S. Private Vaults customer has been so lucky. In September 2022, a judge ruled that the FBI raid was legal under civil forfeiture laws and dismissed the depositors’ class-action lawsuit. An FBI spokesperson also said the agency was putting a process in place to return items to innocent owners, but as of March 2023, at least one person still claimed she hadn’t gotten her money back — even though she wasn’t criminally charged. If this story ever becomes a Hollywood movie, we’ll be first in line at the box office.
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